Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer has said a “ceasefire that lasts” must “happen now” in the Israel-Hamas war.
This largely contradicts the (more realistic) position he held recently, where it was claimed that a ceasefire would “embolden” Hamas. The Islamist terror group has no interest in a lasting peace with Israel, and has vowed to repeat the October 7th massacres of Jewish civilians “again and again.”
In reality, neither ad-hoc foreign policy has any influence on events in the Middle East. While any ceasefire would simply buy Hamas time to regroup and attack, Starmer is hoping that this latest shift will help bring an end to quarrelling within the Labour Party’s ranks.
On Sunday, Starmer told the Scottish Labour conference that “everyone” wants an end to the fighting, “not just for now, not just for a pause, but permanently.”
A ceasefire that lasts. This is what must happen now. The fighting must stop now.
His speech was conveniently delivered a day after the Scottish Labour Party passed a motion calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza. There has been some inter-party wrangling over Starmer’s continued refusal to use the term “immediate ceasefire,” but the rhetoric is likely to be seen by many of Labour’s mainly Muslim pro-Palestine supporters as a step in the right direction.
It follows months of U-turns, resignations, and a parliamentary rebellion during which Labour’s more leftist factions and prominent Muslim supporters have protested that Labour HQ has been neither supportive enough of Palestine nor critical enough of Israel.
Supporters of Labour’s ceasefire position change say this is not the latest in a growing list of U-turns for which Starmer is gaining a damaging reputation, but claim that it is a response to Israel’s “wholesale rejection of [the] laws of war.” Others—including some who are critical of the Israeli administration—stress that the move has much more to do with UK national politics, as Labour officials become increasingly “worried” by party “infighting.”
Few in the Middle East take any notice of Starmer, but weekly ‘pro-Palestine’ demonstrations—grimly nicknamed ‘Jihadidays’ by their opponents—now firmly fix the aftermath of the Hamas pogrom of October 7th to the political agenda, not least in Labour circles.
Monday’s newspapers have noted that Starmer “is under mounting pressure from his own side to toughen its position on Gaza.” Labour frontbencher Wes Streeting has also criticised Israel for “going beyond reasonable self-defence.” As usual with those striking anti-Israel poses, he failed to explain exactly what would be a ‘reasonable’ response to a genocidal antisemitic pogrom. In reality, military experts have been struck by the restraint Israeli Defence Forces have exercised in their assault on Hamas in Gaza.
Forced to observe a complicated, Labour candidate-free by-election in Rochdale later this month, it remains unclear whether Starmer’s appeasement efforts will convince his Muslim electoral base. It is clear, however, that they mark another step in the abandonment of Israel, the only democracy in the Middle East, by Western political elites.
